His thoughts would then return to the past, always to the past that owned his life like a bank holding a mortgage that would never be paid in full. He would think of the life that might have been-a young man’s dreams, the great adventure that was not, the death of the brother he never had, a wife who loved him but left him… and then he would think of his failures, revisiting each one until he arrived at the failure that would forever haunt his nights, and he would reach for the bottle. And so his life would go until one morning he would not answer Buddy.

But the day was not yet over and his thoughts not yet there. He whistled, and Buddy appeared and bounded up onto the half-sized rocking chair next to his. Ben reached over and scratched Buddy’s neck then ran his fingers over

the block letters carved into the seat back: GRACIE.

5:47 P.M.

Seven hundred miles away, a blonde-haired girl sprinted down a soccer field in Texas.

“Run, Gracie, run!”

Gracie Ann Brice could run like a boy, faster than most boys her age, ten going on thirty, which made playing soccer against girls her own age seem almost unfair. But she was fun to watch, if your daughter was on her team.

She pushed the ball up the sideline, past the parents cheering in the stands and Coach Wally wearing a Tornadoes jersey and her dad filming her with the camcorder-she made a face for the camera-while shouting into his cell phone: “Cripes, Lou! Tell those New York suits it’s my killer app, it’s my company, it’s my IPO-and the price is gonna be thirty a share and not a freaking penny less!”

Multitasking, he called it.

Without breaking stride, Gracie drove the laces of her white Lotto soccer shoe into the ball, kicking it over the oncoming defenders’ heads and right to Brenda on the far side of the field. Then she pulled up and looked back at her skinny thirty-seven-year-old SO (Significant Other) on the sideline. He was now gesturing with the camcorder, swinging it up and down and videotaping the ground, the sky, the ground, the sky, all of his attention on the cell phone. She couldn’t help but shake her head and smile, the kind of smile grownups use on small children, but only those related to them by blood.